Évaluation publiée le 6 décembre 2020
Art itself.
Nominated for most innovative gameplay.
This is contemporary art that's worth your money, lads.
Using videogame as a vessel to impart higher meanings.
Just as my mom used to tell me: "Study, child, for the pen is lighter then the shovel", I would dare reply to her that there are thoughts that weigh a thousand pounds.
Introductory:
It's impossible not to remember (and point out) a couple of preliminary things:
1. CodeParade's (and others) videos on non-euclidean geometry, how it would be applied to videogames and the development of non-euclidean videogame engines, that is to say, the shortest path from point A to point B is no longer a straight line. Just how warped can reality get?
2. Portal. Superliminal is as influenced by Portal as my children would be, if I had any, influenced by me. This is not to say it's unoriginal. The puzzle landscape is evolving, and one could only imagine how trippy it would be to play this on VR. Portal kindled a beautiful fire for videogames that will burn for ages. Reality-bending puzzlery, like God itself beckoned to you
c'mere kiddo, let's play around with this ball of humans I just fashioned out of fairy dust. But this is about Superliminal, which stands on its own as a Titan that not only breaks the 4th wall, but freaking demolishes it, crumbles it down to dust and sucks you in for that deep philosophical (and visual!!!) experience. Man, this needs to be on VR stat.
3. Miegakure
is it out yet?, "A Puzzle Platformer in Four Dimensions", a game which is trying to visualize the fourth dimension, something hard (but not impossible) even to conceive firstly, that is to say, create it out of nothingness in the blank space of thought, imagine developing a
puzzle game entirely based on it. It'll be by far the most efficacious way of visualizing 4D yet invented, in my feeble understanding.
4. Lucid dreaming. From dream journaling, wake up calls to symbolic representation inside dreams, this game did its research on the topic. Everything is included, and it feels like one is lucid dreaming while playing this game. They warn you that the game could trigger dissociation, and I'm not surprised. My last question would be: How does I-LIDS work, really, and can it be compared to Elon Musk's
Neuralink? (And this is where reality meets Sci-fi). (Treating spine diseases my ass! You can see the smirk of excitement on Elon's face as he showcases what will be
BLACK MIRROR ALL THE WAY BABY!!!!!!)
5. Optical illusions. Namely, the perspective kind. Google "T-Rex Optical Illusion" for a classic!
Boring technical stuff:
I write this review just after finishing the game. It took me
4.3 hours to do so, but I paused to piss and didn't finish it in one sitting. So I guess the game is short, but I'm off to achievement hunting, trying to speedrun some parts, checking out extras, anyway, doing my thing. If you're like me, doing these should extend playtime a little bit.
Really easy and light on mechanics. No button-mashing extravaganza here. It matters little (as one TF2 boi would say), because difficulty for its own right isn't the focus here at all: mechanics mean nothing to Superliminal. Instead, what you'll find is that it forces you to use your brain in different and totally new fun ways despite looking like a walking simulator at first glance (which is not the case at all! I say this in regards to mechanics
only).
Graphics are not cutting edge, but very sufficient to convey the message and well optimized (Tip: Turn off V-Sync in-game and enable fast V-Sync on Nvidia Control Panel. Way less input lag).
As I move on to talk about the
story, I end this part here: Story and puzzles. This is what this game's about. Just like life reveals its meaning steadily, you will embark on a journey that progresses to a satisfying resolution, that is to say, the game has a thoughtful and well-defined story to tell, about Dr. Glenn Pierce, his new Somnasculpt Dream Therapy, and how it can be applied to lessen suffering... and you'll find some interesting stuff along the way.
Fun part where I just trip:
With that out of the way, I can only imagine the amount of work poured into this. I cannot distill the essence of this game, I'll still play more so I'll just point out some stuff that caught my eye right off the bat (first experience + possible mini-spoiler, if you want to jump in blind, read this not, yes?):
1. I feel like the Standard Orientation Protocol (the woman that tells you everything is going wrong) could be compared to the anxious voice inside our own heads, the inner judge that tells us we're inadequate, insufficient, ugly and that everything's trash all the time. Because she is as robotic, cold and judgmental as we are, when anxious, talking to ourselves stuck in some sort of feedback loop. She tells you that it is all your fault, and if you would just be like everyone else and
get some small, insignificant detail right, all this suffering would not be happening. Talk about reminding of weird embarassing things you said out loud in the past!!! She also reminds me of GLaDOS (This is the last time Portal will be mentioned on this abhorrent review, I apologize).
2. Close to finishing the game, one finds oneself in a room with music playing. This teleported me instantly to Aperture Science, listening to the unforgettable "Still Alive" radio tune while waking up as a lab rat. But there's also loud ass music playing in the OTHER room (???), and a lot of other details and little easter eggs I will try to see by replaying the game...
3. It really feels like being in therapy in this game, and the sheer manipulation of childlike objects, task completion and problem solving (as one does, in therapy when child) all immerses you deeper into this feeling of being a lab rat and having no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue of what's going on.
Final Considerations
I feel like the concept has been explored to the brim, but weirdly enough I think there still should exist more to be said about this (sequel? anyone?). Your vision only appears 3D because you have two eyes, which causes an effect known as stereo-something, binocular vision or something. If you close one eye, the image that appears looks a hell of a lot 2D, like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ snapshot of the scene you're watching. Just thinking about this simple fact can make one trip to endless depths. So is my eye a camera now? Just what design came first? Is a camera more sophisticated than my eye, a complex evolutionary machine developed during the course of millions of years? How many frames per second can my freaking eye render? Is 4K quality analogous to the human eye, is it better, or is it worse? Is that lamppost out there some real object located far away or just a small little stick that I could grab with the tips of my fingers if I wanted to? Are my eyes reliable or could there possibly be some other, better way to see?
For instance, imagine if you will a machine that's labeled "EYES". You would be able to look through it, and by doing so, you would actually SEE ALL of the electromagnetic spectrum (including X rays, gamma rays, infrared and ultraviolet, not just the visible spectrum, a.k.a. light. How would ultraviolet look like? Like violet, but more saturated? Maybe that's why they used "ULTRA"?)
Yes. The senses are trippy, and work in tandem to form some weird amalgam (or illusion) we call "reality". Shadows, sounds, smells, proprioception etc. all render reality for us, but it is easily bendable, as you will see "clearly" (paradox much? get used to it) with Superliminal.
What is reality? And where does actuality ends and subjectivity begins? Is there not a clear line? Or are they all tangled up together, inside this thing called conscious awareness, the superliminal, human experience?
Yes. Very confusing and pleasant stuff.
A well-deserved 10/10.